Gray squirrel meat is in such high demand that game butchers are struggling to keep up. The meat of the ubiquitous, furry little creatures is being praised due to its low fat content and for being “green,” since it comes from local, “free-range” sources.

In addition, some patriotic Brits feel that eating gray squirrels helps to save their native reds, which have dwindled since their competitive gray cousins were introduced to the region in the 19th century.

Kate Colquhoun, the author of “Taste: The Story of Britain Through Its Cooking,” writes about Britain’s newest culinary obsession. “Normally, we Brits are almost uniquely squeamish about unfamiliar meat,” she says.

The BBC interviews chef Kevin Vyner, who has been cooking up gray squirrel for customers of the Kingsley Village shop. The meat is good in pastries or in a fricassee with Cornish cream and walnuts, he says. “They are cute and they are so magical, the way they run around and do things,” Vyner acknowledged. “But any meat is meat. In the rest of Europe people eat these things all the time.”

Squirrel meat is “about as ethical a dish as it is possible to serve on a dinner plate” says The New Zealand Herald, which attributes the meat’s popularity to its green credentials. Squirrel meat is low-fat, low in food transport miles and completely free-range, some claim.

In January of 2008, former presidential candidate Mike Huckabee appealed to South Carolina’s squirrel-eating constituency: “When I was in college, we used to take a popcorn popper, because that was the only thing they would let us use in the dorm, and we would fry squirrels in a popcorn popper in the dorm room.”

Squirrel hunters plan to place 1,000 traps along the British/Scottish border to stop gray squirrels from spreading to the north. The region’s native red squirrels have dwindled since the gray variety was introduced into the country in the 19th century.

An October 2007 story in The New York Times Magazine examined England’s pride in its native red squirrels and the various attempts to save them. The article recounts a 2006 House of Lords debate, during which Earl Peelrose described the red squirrel as “an integral part of our woodland landscape—an iconic creature, immortalized by Beatrix Potter, through the charismatic character of Squirrel Nutkin.” Another member suggested studying the edibility of grays as a possible solution.

Writer John Brock says that it was not until the American South caught up with the North financially that Southerners started eating more beef and lamb. “Rural Southern families always have depended on the family sharpshooter to furnish a little alternative meat for the family table: squirrels, rabbits, possums, quail and other wild game,” Brock says.

Writer Lauren Brown provides an overview of the creatures, touching upon the culture of squirrel-eating and hunting in rural areas of the United States. She notes that the original 1931 edition of “The Joy of Cooking” included a section on skinning and preparing squirrels, raccoons and opossum.